Mérida English Library

One of the advantages of living here in Mérida, Yúcatan, México is having an English library at our fingertips. Here we can find several children's books, language books, novels, guide books, and so on, not to mention rent videos from a somewhat limited selection. Every Saturday at 10, there is a story hour for kids, much like you would find in public libraries in our home town of Erie, PA or in Springfield, MO. For quite awhile, one particular American lady would do the storytime, but for whatever reason has left Mérida or at least stopped volunteering her time there. She was great and always did activities with the kids be it an art project or making cookies or just about anything that went along with the theme. So, after arriving several Saturdays with no teacher, we were pleasantly surprised to see a new volunteer - Sangita, a lady from India. She is here for a few months teaching dance and misses being around kids, so she now spends an hour on Saturdays hanging out with ours. Sangita knows several languages and, even though didn't know Spanish before arriving in Mérida, is expected to teach in the language. She already reads it very well, probably for knowing both English and French, among other languages. So, here we are in Mexico, attending an English storytime which has an Indian teacher - go figure :-)

You can tell in the picture that our kids are totally enthralled with the new accent and hearing stories in general. No, Jonathan is not covering his ears but simply holding on to his right ear while he sucks his left thumb - content as ever. Amazingly, I haven't heard questions yet from the kids about her nose ring or the design that she draws/paints on her forehead. I'm sure it will come one of these days. Sorry you can't see her face very well in the picture! She is a very intelligent woman and I appreciate her interest in our kids!